


Conversations  (Elegy)

by jessebee



Series: Folium Curve [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Friendship, Grief/Mourning, Late Night Conversations, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-21
Updated: 2016-04-21
Packaged: 2018-06-03 14:35:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6614440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jessebee/pseuds/jessebee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What do you say – what <i>can</i> you say – when a loved one is lost?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Conversations  (Elegy)

**Author's Note:**

> This is intended as a companion piece to my story _Tesseract_ , which is a TFA AU of sorts. Because That Thing That Happened? Didn't end that way in _**my**_ canon, babes; no 'effing way. Dedicated again to culturevulture73, for everything you already know about.

* *

[Finn and Poe]

 

 

Finn's first impression of General Organa was that she had maybe two or three more soft spots than his old commander Phasma had had, even without the armor. His friend Poe Dameron disagreed, and he was coming to trust Poe's opinion on that kind of thing, but the tribunal was still out, as far as Finn was concerned.

 

The last encounter hadn't done a whole huge lot for Poe's side of the argument. Except ... there had been the thing.

 

Finn had barely been awake enough to recognize that (a) he was alive, and (b) the Medical he was in wasn't a First Order unit, when the general had swept in, followed by a droid shiny enough to hurt his eyes and much better than the droid, Poe.

 

“Tell me what you saw on Starkiller,” she said, and while her voice had been soft, her tone had that starch that meant business. Finn had tried his best but that'd been mainly for Poe, who'd stood close to the general and had bitten his lip when Finn had talked about that awful scene on the catwalk. She took a breath when Finn described the way Han Solo had shouted at Kylo Ren and walked out to meet him, and how their words after that had carried, soft but dead clear.

 

“And we fought, in the snow, and I was wounded – ” General Organa held up her hand, and Finn stopped talking. Poe helped him swallow a little bit of water.

 

“You fought him with the lightsaber,” she said, the first thing she had said since Finn had started his report.

 

“Yes, sir. We … 'troopers, we're trained to fight with ...” She held up her hand again. Then she closed her eyes, and shook her head, just a little.

 

But then the thing happened. Poe put his hand on the general's shoulder. “Ma'am?” he said, very quietly.

 

She straightened and her head came up, and she breathed in deeply. Reached up and put her own hand over Poe's. Patted it. When her eyes opened, she looked … different, for a minute. “Thank you, Poe,” she said, and her voice was different too.

 

*

 

They stay with him, those differences, and that's what prompts him to ask Poe about them a few days later. He's been released from Medical, sort of, and been put in a different room where he can rest. He's under pretty strict orders from the doctors and medi-droids about what he can and can't do, but he hasn't got much desire to buck them yet. He still hurts, quite a bit, and he's pretty damn lucky to be alive, never mind walking, and he knows it.

 

“What's up, buddy? You hurting?” Poe's voice breaks into Finn's concentration, or lack of, really, on the sabacc game they're playing. And that's new and different and kinda awesome, too: the whole idea that Poe would actually choose to keep him company.

 

Finn lays his cards down on the little table-tray thing they're using. “Yeah, but that's not ...”

 

Poe lays his cards down too. “What?” he asks, leaning a little closer. The ventilation system brings Finn a drift of nice-smelling cooler air, along with the faint scents of leather and metal and something else he's come to think of as just Poe. Poe always smells good.

 

“When the general ...”

 

“Organa?” Poe prompts, because there is more than one of those around the base.

 

“Yeah. When I told her about how Han Solo, how Ren killed him … ” And he breaks off, because Poe is getting a look on his face that Finn doesn't know what to do with.

 

Poe blows out a hard breath of air. “Finn, what'd they ever tell you guys about us? I mean, the New Republic and all?”

 

Finn shrugs, carefully. “That you're a bunch of tyrants. That people like General Organa and Han Solo and Luke Skywalker were responsible for bringing down the 'good and benevolent Empire' and killing a lot of people and it was the First Order's job now to bring them down. That the Jedi were horrible and the Knights of Ren were wonderful. I think a lot of us always knew it was so much _pudu_ – hells, anybody who'd seen what a bantha's ass Kylo Ren was _knew_ that – but it wasn't like we had a choice. And it was worth your life to say that out loud.”

 

Poe closes his eyes and hangs his head down for a minute. When he looks up again, he runs one hand through his unruly hair, and fixes Finn with a dark, intent gaze. “Han Solo and General Organa were together for a lotta years. The … _man_ – ” he spits out the word, “ – who's now Kylo Ren? Is her son.”

 

For half a minute it just doesn't compute. And then, horribly, it does.

 

Finn's mouth drops open. “Han Solo was his _father_?”

 

He doesn't know how to take that in. For a moment he's not even sure he knows how to breathe around it. Every minute of the short time he knew Solo seems to flash through his mind: the rough, teasing affection; the way Solo had given him the chance, and the freedom, to find out what he, Finn, was made of.

 

The words of forgiveness Solo had offered Ren, just before his son had murdered him.

 

“He – ” Finn has to swallow before he can go on, and it's not easy. “He was _that lucky_ , to even _know_ who his father was, never mind that it was _Han Solo_ , and _he still did that?_ ”

 

Poe's eyes get too bright, but a smile pulls at his mouth at the same time, and he reaches out to take Finn's hand in his own warm one. “I _knew_ I made the right decision about you, Finn,” he says softly. “I just knew it.”

 

* *

 

 

[Rey and Chewbacca]

 

 

To say that Rey has got mixed feelings about it all might be the understatement of the standard annum.

 

Not even a week ago she had been doing the only things she could ever really remember doing, scavenging for parts in the hot sands of the only home she'd ever known, alone, waiting for a family she didn't remember.

 

Now she is hurtling through hyperspace on-board the junk heap of a freighter so famous even she had heard of it, in company of an ancient astromech droid and a grieving Wookie, on their way to find a myth. She has fought pitched battles with antique weapons and some weird power inside her own head. She has found friends, which were things she'd never had before, only to see one murdered in front of her and another nearly so, by the same man who had tortured her.

 

Now she huddles a little deeper into the blanket she'd pulled from one of the _Millennium_ _Falcon's_ storage lockers, and watches the smears of the stars out the cockpit's views, and wonders if she'll ever really be warm again.

 

In the pilot's seat, Chewbacca is a monolith in tangled russet fur. He has moved little since they lifted from D'Qar Base and made the jump to hyperspace, but there's a low rumble that might be from him, just on the edge of Rey's hearing, and one huge hand rests on the console in front of him, fingers moving once in a while, a tiny sweep back and forth across the metal.

 

Rey doesn't know how to do this. Being so close to so many other beings for this long is hard anyway, in ways she had never imagined, and death has never meant much before other than bones in the sand and maybe another opportunity to get a little ahead, and she does not know how to do this. She swallows. “Chewbacca?”

 

The rumble stops, and the monolith slowly turns its head. Chewbacca's eyes are unreadable, nearly hidden in fur and shadows. If any of the stories Rey has ever heard are true, this being has been Han Solo's partner for more than twice the years Rey herself has even been alive. “I'm sorry,” she says. Her chest is tight and the words come hard. “I am so, so sorry.”

 

The first sound Chewbacca makes doesn't translate, not into words. It is mourning, pure and simple, and it shivers down Rey's spine like the cries of the desert night-hunters.

 

<Lost,> he rumbles finally, and turns to look straight ahead. <Lost. My life-debt is done. When we have found Luke, this ship will be his, and I will go home to stay and tell Han's stories to my own cubs, and my people will remember the truth.>

 

Rey's eyes sting and she blinks hard. She doesn't cry, she hasn't since she was a child – no sane desert dweller would waste water like that. But it hurts, _a lot_ , to know that she'll soon lose this, too: this link to the man who rescued her and challenged her, a friendship ripped out before the roots had barely begun to grip.

 

“Would you ...” She swallows air, and tries again. “Would it be alright for me to – visit – sometime? To hear Han's stories too?”

 

Chewbacca looks at her again, and something shifts, warms, in the air around them. <I will tell you now. Listen .>

 

* *

 

 

[Poe and Leia and Chewbacca]

 

 

Poe's not sure he believes it. In fact, he isn't entirely sure he knows _how_ to believe it, the idea _[the fact]_ that Han Solo is really dead.

 

The post-mission bash had been its usual noisy madness, and Poe had given his speech and bought his due rounds before slipping away to the relative quiet of the hangars. Fighter pilots think they're invulnerable – they have to, deep down, most of them, or they'd never fly combat again. Poe himself had lost that false comfort quite a while ago.

 

Or he thought he had, anyway. Now he suspects that he's really just been kidding himself all along.

 

Poe steps out into the darkness of the landing field, the carrier bag over his shoulder giving out a quiet 'clink'. A ways ahead of him sits the silent bulk of the _Millennium_ _Falcon_ , a dark splotch against the faint starlight of the night.

 

Most of his squadron had known Solo only by reputation and story, the man himself half a legend in the same way Luke Skywalker now was. The Han of Poe's own memories is a bit different.

 

He's taken about three paces when he hears her. “Out for a walk, Commander?”

 

Poe turns towards the voice, although the speaker is hidden in the shadows edging the outside of the hangar building. “Yes, ma'am, to that ship over there.” He nods toward the _Falcon_. “Would you care to walk with me?”

 

“I believe I would.”

 

Leia Organa falls into step with him, and Poe automatically adjusts his stride to match her shorter one. He's got no clue what in any of seven hells to say to her, although he's not really surprised to meet her now, like this. Not tonight.

 

His burden 'clinks' again as he resettles the bag over his shoulder.

 

“Are those bottles I hear?”

 

“Absolutely.”

 

“Good,” Leia says. “Very good.” And that's their only conversation until they reach the _Falcon_. The ship's ramp is down, which should mean that someone is aboard her. Leia stops him then, with a brief hand on his arm.

 

Poe chances a look at her and just as quickly looks away again, because she is staring up at the old freighter with eyes that are very bright, too bright, in the starlight. Her right hand is pressed hard against her ribs.

 

For a minute or two, all Poe hears are the night creatures of this world, buzzing to each other in the trees and bushes. Then they fall silent, as if something – or someone – is waiting.

 

Finally Leia takes a deep, deep breath and lets it out again. She steps to the foot of the ramp, and looks up into the ship. “It's me, and Poe Dameron,” she says, and her voice is almost steady. “Permission to come aboard?”

 

It takes a minute, but finally there is movement, and a single, hoarse bark.

 

No lights are turned on but Leia doesn't seem to need any, and the ambient glow of the equipment ready-lights is enough for Poe to follow her up into the _Falcon's_ interior.

 

She leads him into the ship's passenger lounge, which is really just a wide spot where several shadowy corridors join. Chewbacca is a bulky shadow sitting on the far side of the round holo-game table. Leia seats herself opposite him, and after a moment, Poe sits down beside her and opens up his bag.

 

He's not at all sure what he'd expected to happen, or if he'd expected anything at all, but this silence isn't it. His younger self's memories of this ship are mostly light and the smells of fuel and coolant and bodies in need of a shower. The sounds of Han and Chewbacca fighting good-naturedly about something that needs fixing; of Luke and Poe's own mom arguing the merits of X-wing fighters against Y's; of the princess's low laughter.

 

Not this silence.

 

The bottles hitting the tabletop are loud, setting up strange echoes in the oddly-shaped space. Poe sets about opening up three of them.

 

Leia's voice almost makes him jump. “That had better be Corellian ale, Poe.”

 

“Yes.” He swallows the “ma'am,” because this isn't the time or the place. “Nothing less. And a bottle of brandale from Wedge Antilles.”

 

There's a rumble from Chewbacca at that, although Poe's never picked up enough ShriiWook to translate.

 

If Leia understands, she doesn't say. She just picks up one of the open bottles. “Clear skies, pirate,” she says, low and broken, and takes a long drink.

 

It's the last thing she says that night.

 

* *

 

 


End file.
